Achim Borchardt-Hume

What is a photographic image? Can a photograph ever tell the truth? These are some of the questions artist Walid Raad (born 1967) has been investigating for the past 20 years, in a practice that encompasses photography, film and video, sculpture, installation and performance. This publication brings together three major bodies of work: the photographic and video works produced under the fictional collective name The Atlas Group; various series of seemingly "straight" photography of his native Beirut titled Sweet Talk: Commissions (Beirut); and his most recent project, Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World. The publication includes an exchange between the artist and curator Achim Borchardt-Hume; an essay on conceptions of truth by poet and writer Alan Gilbert; a text on Raad's use of photography and its ties to Beirut by Blake Stimson; and an essay by H l ne Chouteau-Matikian.

Beirut presents a large gathering of Gerhard Richter's overpainted photographs from the mid-1980s to the present. Rarely seen in print, these works merge the artist's longstanding fascination with the respective languages and textures of photography and abstract painting. The imagery ranges from domestic and family photos to holiday snaps, landscapes, mountain ranges and studio shots, all drawn from Richter's photographic archives. Also featured in this volume is Museum Visit, a series of 234 overpainted photographs, each of which was taken during a typical busy day at the Tate Modern. An essay by Achim Borchardt-Hume considers the overpainted photographs within Richter's wider oeuvre, from the photo paintings of the 1960s to the 18 October 1977 cycle, from Atlas to War Cut. Borchardt-Hume asserts: "The photographs allow an insight into the private world of Richter, albeit an insight that is always seen--quite literally--through the veil of paint and painting."

The first monograph of Chicago-based Theaster Gates, one of the most exciting and highly regarded contemporary artists at work today.Theaster Gates has developed an expanded artistic practice that includes space development, object making, performance and critical engagement with many publics. Gates transforms spaces, institutions, traditions, and perceptions.Gates's training as an urban planner and sculptor, and subsequent time spent studying clay, has given him keen awareness of the poetics of production and systems of organizing. Playing with these poetic and systematic interests, Gates has assembled gospel choirs, formed temporary unions, and used systems of mass production as a way of underscoring the need that industry has for the body.Gates refers to his working method as 'critique through collaboration' and his projects often stretch the form of what we usually understand visual art to be. His focus is also on the availability of information and the cross-fertilization of ideas. His multi-faceted exhibitions investigate themes of race and history through sculpture, installation, performance and two-dimensional works, furthering the artist’s interest in a critique of social practice, shared economies and the question of objects in relation to political and cultural thought.Gates' recent exhibition and performance venues include the Seattle Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, Milwaukee Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Whitney Biennial in New York. Gates was a participating artist in Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012) with his total-living installation 12 Ballads for Huguenot House. Other notable solo exhibitions include An Epitaph for Civil Rights at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2011) and My Labor Is My Protest, at White Cube Bermondsey, London (2012). Parallel to his artist career, Gates is also Director of Arts and Public Life Initiative at the University of Chicago and a board member of the city's South Side Community Center.Recently commissioned as the 2012 Armory Show Artist and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2011, Gates has received awards and grants from Creative Capital, the Joyce Foundation, Graham Foundation, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.

For the latest Bloomberg Commission at the Whitechapel Gallery, Italian artist Giuseppe Penone continues his career-long reflection on the passing of time and the contact between man and nature. Spazio di Luce (Space of Light) is a bronze cast of the thick layer of wax surrounding a 12 metre-tall larch, with a radiant gold-leaf interior. Born in 1947 in Garessio, Italy, Giuseppe Penone studied at the Accademia di Belle Arte before leaving formal education to pursue his artistic practice in the woods surrounding his home. Aged 22, he was the youngest member to be admitted to the legendary group Arte Povera, which called for a radical rethink of society through making works directly appealing to the senses and challenging common conventions of art making. Penone has exhibited widely in Europe and America and his work is held in important international collections including Tate Modern, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His large-scale sculpture Idee di Pietra inaugurated dOCUMENTA 13 in 2010 and he was recently selected as 2013 artist for Versailles. He currently lives and works in Turin, Italy. This publication has been created in close collaboration with the artist and gives a unique insight into the universe of ideas that underpins his works. It brings together previously unpublished drawings, photographs of historic actions and recent sculptures, and a selection of the artist’s own writings. The publication also includes an interview between Achim Borchardt-Hume and the artist, an essay by art critic and scholar Douglas Fogle focusing on Penone’s work with trees alongside full page colour installation images of the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a Turin-based collection owned by arts patron Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Founded in 1995, it has become one of the foremost collections of international contemporary art in Italy today, consisting of over 1000 works dating from the 1970s to the present day. The Foundation Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, set up by the collector in 1997, is a not-for-profit organization that supports and promotes the development and understanding of contemporary art, and was created in partnership with Italian curator and scholar Francesco Bonami, who was appointed Artistic Director of the Foundation and Collection. This publication documents four consecutive displays of works from the collection at the Whitechapel Gallery. Each display has been curated by Achim Borchardt-Hume (Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery) in collaboration with Francesco Bonami (Artistic Director, FSRR). It includes an in-depth interview between Achim Borchardt-Hume and Patrizia Sandretto, an essay on the act of collecting by Francesco Bonami alongside images and texts on all artworks displayed as part of the collection series. Artists featured include Thomas Demand, Fischli & Weiss, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Anish Kapoor, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel and Cerith Wyn Evans